Barbecues and cookouts continue to grow in popularity year after year. The succulent taste of such foods as hamburgers, steak, chicken, beef and pork ribs, pork chops, and even fish grilled over an open fire continues to bring people back for more. In fact, company picnics and large social gatherings centered around outdoor picnics are becoming more and more popular.
In order to serve the relatively large number of people at company picnics and such social gatherings, various large capacity outdoor cooking equipment has been developed by a number of manufacturers. These consist of, for example, four to six inch deep flat pan charcoal grills with an adjustable meat rack, six inch to eight inch deep gas fired grills with fixed meat racks and barrel type roasters either trailer mounted or on legs.
While these devices are quite effective to achieve their particular purpose, they do suffer from a lack of versatility. Accordingly, outdoor cooking equipment rental companies and catering services must purchase separate pieces of equipment so as to have a full line of products available to customers. For example, rental equipment companies would need to purchase gas grills, charcoal grills, roasters as well as hot and cold serving tables to meet the needs of all of their customers. This represents an undesirable significant capital expense.
It is, therefore, clear that a need exists for a relatively inexpensive convertible food preparation/holding apparatus that may be simply and easily converted to meet the needs of the end user.